What ever happened to those hot bead nuclear reactors? I can’t remember if that’s exactly what they were called, but it was something to that effect. They used pellets of uranium in an inert bed of sand or some crap and it was supposed to be more efficient and produce less waste from the control rod/coolant. Supposedly they could be used at a much smaller scale then current technology.
Anybody remember reading about this in Pop Sci or Pop Mechanics and know what I’m talking about?
[quote]Vegita wrote:
The downside to this is that in 100 years it will probably be possible for someone with bad intentions to control the technology enough to make super germ weapons and such.
[/quote]
Well… that’s a terrifying thought.
Mind you, the whole time I was reading your post I was thinking; “But what if there’s just one unforseen circumstance? One permutation out of thousands of possible things that could go wrong that they don’t see?” It’s a fantastic idea and a remarkable achievement of technology… but so very, very freakin’ scary in all the potential scenarios for accidents or abuse.
[quote]Vegita wrote:
boomerlu wrote:
Vegita wrote:
nephorm wrote:
boomerlu wrote:
Again, the nanotech idea is thermodynamically unsound. How much energy do you think it would take for those nanobots to assemble the gasoline? Order is less favored in nature than disorder or entropy. To make order (gasoline) from disorder (random dirt) requires an input of energy beyond what you would receive in return.
It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with thermodynamics. If I yell, causing an avalanche, the energy I put into the system (my voice) is not equivalent to the energy released by the resulting reaction. You’re ignoring the potential energy already present in the system. Same thing with nanotech. It may only take a small amount of energy to have some little doodad rearrange molecules, which would then allow the potential energy stored in the molecules to be released.
True, you can’t get more energy out of a system than “you” put in, but “you” also includes the processes of nature, etc.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that gasoline-creating-nanorobots are realistic.
Thanks Neph, I thought I was going to have to give a class on kenetic VS potential energy. Friggin 8th grade science? This stuff isn’t that hard. Anyone who outright disbelieves in any of these alternate energy because they sound pie in the sky is just afraid of change. It’s actually quite ok, most people are. But unless you have a degree in quantumn physics, molecular biology and a host of other related sciences, best to just leave it at speculating for now. Nobody has all the answers, and I doubt that anyone really has even one answer. The only real true statement you could make for any of this is I don’t know, sure it seems possible, and I hope it works.
V
Well I don’t disbelieve the things I disbelieve because they sound pie in the sky, but because of sound scientific reasoning.
Like I believe that fusion (hell I said fusion is already possible on Earth) will be a good source of energy, as will solar power. In fact I may be working on plasma/fusion research in a year or two. The current research is geared towards having a plasma which is controllable with less and less mechanisms (ie, less input of work to control) so that it’s a more efficient process.
But no gasoline-creating-nano-tech robots please.
Actually, that is not to say such robots wouldn’t be useful. Even if you create certain molecules at an energy deficit, it could be worth it such molecules were easier to work with, or if such robots constructed catalysts, etc…and didn’t actually carry out the gasoline-creation process by THEMSELVES.
Many People have a misconception of nanotech bots as well. there would not be tiny metal machines with little octopus arms manuvering things around. What would realistically happen would be to take a bacteria, and modify it’s DNA strain so that the byproduct of it’s existance would be petrolium, not any host of other bio products from bacteria. You also engeneer them so that whatever materials you want to convert into petrolium are what the bacteria survive on. Take granite for example, You could theoretically alter a bacterias DNA sequence so that it consumes Granite, and the by product is petrolium. You might not get 100% of the potential energy from the granite as the bacteria are using some of that energy to survive and reproduce etc… but you don’t actually have to put any energy in the system, the bacteria simply use up some and give you the rest in a more useable form. For the record, I used granite for an example, I have no idea what we would actually choose to convert, but something with a high energy potential would be ideal.
There is research being done now with regard to debilitating diseases, scientists are using the common cold and removing the DNA parts that make us sick and changing them with DNA strands that people are deficient in, Cikle cell anemia, parkinsens, etc… I would classify this as nano bot technology and it’s already being researched on a small scale. Esentially they re-program these single cell or multi cell microscopic organisms to do useful things instead of harmful things. The downside to this is that in 100 years it will probably be possible for someone with bad intentions to control the technology enough to make super germ weapons and such.
V[/quote]
Ahh, see this is actually much different, and indeed it would be “solar powered”.
I guess the main issue here is not total energy, since we already get more than enough from the sun. The challenge is to USE that energy from the sun efficiently, or convert it efficiently into a form which we can use.
Oh, btw, those aren’t really “nano-tech robots”. I believe actual nano-technology is NOT biological in nature.
What you are referring to is recombinant bacteria created using retroviral engineering.
Actually retroviral engineering is VERY scary, but also VERY exciting.
What a virus does is basically take out a piece of your genome in a certain cell and incorporate its own DNA into your cell, which it uses to reproduce and then spread itself.
Promising uses: cancer.
Cancer is caused by a DNA mutation in certain cells. Take the DNA from an unaffeted cell, and design a virus to take that DNA and incorporate it into the cancer cells.
DNA alteration:
You can literally change some of your own genetic properties (although there will be a big ethical discussion).
This can be good or very deadly…as you may well be able to imagine.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
boomerlu wrote:
Actually, that is not to say such robots wouldn’t be useful. Even if you create certain molecules at an energy deficit, it could be worth it such molecules were easier to work with, or if such robots constructed catalysts, etc…and didn’t actually carry out the gasoline-creation process by THEMSELVES.
Or if they were, say, powered by other natural processes (such as light) that would be too slow to use otherwise. That is, you can afford to wait for 50 years to make an oil field, if light is used to power some conversion process, at a loss. You probably can’t efficiently store the energy of the light directly and then harness it after the same 50 years.[/quote]
Yeah, this is the idea. Again the sun provides more than enough energy. Unfortunately, nearly ALL processes, including biological ones, are inefficient at making use of it. However you CAN store the energy of light directly and harness it after a period of time…it’s called a battery, haha.
The idea is more like:
direct solar energy at 10% efficiency
vs
solar powered nano-technology at 30% efficiency with respect to solar energy, and 50% efficiency with respect to materials, giving you like 15% overall
I’m not sure about the details, but I do know engineering and efficiency change dramatically when you compare such macroscopic and microscopic scales. It’s a basic fact that cells are small because it gives them a much better surface area to volume ratio for diffusion, so that would probably be a factor in having nano-scale engineering for energy.